“The presentation of differently scaled food production, offers multiple points of access and applicability for audiences. It makes transition thinkable.
By communicating messages symbolically, employing cultural narratives with positive emotional associations, and tying in other affective issues, it also makes it feelable.”
We are delighted to feature in the May 2026 special issue of Arts, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal focusing on significant research across all aspects of the visual and performing arts.
We Feed The UK: Heritage, Nature and Regenerative Farming in Photographs by Dr Rupert Ashmore is an independent, in-depth study of the context and aims of We Feed The UK, delving into our approach to catalysing the regenerative food and farming transition through grassroots storytelling.
“The imagery advances domesticated and non-domesticated non-human welfare and conveys hybrid spaces, in which more-than-human entities are shown as essential actants in environmental renewal.”
Dr Rupert Ashmore is an art and design historian and Professor of Visual Culture at Northumbria University. His research spans fine art, photography, film and digital media, with a current focus on how photography can support social justice and citizenship for marginalised groups.
After encountering We Feed The UK last year, Rupert expressed his interest in studying We Feed The UK, with a focus on Johannes Pretorius’s Intervention and Renewal photography series for our Cumbria story, Agri-Culture: A Lineage of Hedgerow Ligging. His research uses Johannes’s visual storytelling to reflect on the project as a whole, and how its methods can garner momentum for future-focused food and farming practices.
“Much of the imagery (including Pretorius’s) evokes oikophilia (love of home) and suggests a transgenerational duty of care and resilience that supersedes short-term financial imperatives and links past, present, and future.”
It’s wonderful to see this project recognised by an academic working in the arts, and for our work to be understood and articulated in a way that aligns with our intentions, enriched with beautiful and relevant references. In his closing remarks, Rupert (referencing Miles Richardson) asks, “Emotion is a key mobiliser in driving neoliberal consumerism, so why not environmental action?” and it is this that We Feed The UK aspires to invoke: hope and action for the future of life through storytelling that appeals to our human nature.
Read the full open-access article in Arts special issue: The Visual Arts and Environmental Regeneration in Britain.
